Barcelona Are Flirting with Loss of Key Element in Their On-Field Identity

One of them had a go, and then it was the other's turn. From end to end, they surged in waves, three and four at a time charging through vast expanses, each minute of it whipping Mestalla further and further into a frenzy. 

For Barcelona, it was the usual crew of Lionel Messi, Luis Suarez and Neymar leading the assaults. In response, Santi Mina, Nani and Cancelo did so for Valencia. It was almost as though the six of them were playing on their own, supported by the odd ball from someone else, the midfield not constituting the centre points of structure but merely a place to run through. 

It was exhausting by 80 minutes, and by 90 there wasn't enough haemoglobin to go around. When it was all over, there had been five goals, more than 20 shots, a strike of the woodwork, a penalty, a handful of dubious refereeing decisions, countless rapid breaks and a few thrown missiles. Barcelona won, somehow. But the chaos brought a famous line back into focus. 

"Without the ball we are a disastrous team, a horrible team," Pep Guardiola said of his Barcelona in May 2009, after they had taken down Manchester United in the Champions League final. "So we need the ball."

Having the ball was non-negotiable for Guardiola but it wasn't the only thing that was. Under him, Barcelona's command of possession and therefore control was driven as much by relentless, systematic pressing as it was by any technical quality. The execution of his approach was complex and sophisticated, but the logic behind it was simple. 

"We play in the other team's half as much as possible because I get worried when the ball is in my half," Guardiola said, per Sky Sports. On Saturday, Valencia spent a good deal of time attacking Barcelona's half. 

At Mestalla, it wasn't as though Barcelona didn't have a lot of the ball. They had 70 per cent of the possession against Los Che, but it was how they had it and what they did when they didn't have it that caused them problems. 

Playing direct, searching for the route to goal in a hurry, Luis Enrique's men created an environment of freneticism. When the ball was turned over, there was little pressure exerted on Valencia from the front, allowing the hosts to run through Barcelona's lines with two sharp passes and one bursting run. 

The numbers are telling. On Saturday, 28 per cent of the action took place in Valencia's third, or the end Barcelona were attacking. Compare that to the Catalans' trip to Mestalla in late 2014, when 35 per cent of the action took place in that third of the pitch. 

That might not strike as big a discrepancy, but it is. That incarnation of Valencia in 2014 was vastly superior to the one Barca faced last weekend. In the weeks prior to that meeting two seasons ago, Nuno's men had thrashed Atletico Madrid at the same venue and were on their way to a fourth-placed finish and a return to the Champions League. 

The current Valencia aren't anything like that. Los Che have had five managers in 11 months across six different stints amid institutional turmoil. Structurally, they've been a mess, the defence is flimsy, and there's little in the way of an identifiable tactical approach.

So what's that got to do with Barcelona? The point is that Luis Enrique's men spent less time on Saturday forcing back and suffocating a poor Valencia than they did to a good Valencia two years ago. It's not disastrous in itself, but it points to the Catalans flirting with the loss of one of the key elements in their on-field identity. 

Since Luis Enrique arrived at the club, it's true the men from the Camp Nou have been trending this way, and much of it has made complete sense. 

In the season prior to Lucho taking over, Barcelona had grown stale and almost predictable for their standards. Opponents had begun to develop methods to counter them, and the tenacity and discipline in Barca's work without the ball had slackened. 

Luis Enrique sought to change that. The current manager's intention was to add a faster front-to-back quality to the technical proficiency. The concurrent arrival of Luis Suarez pushed the definition of the team further forward, too, and what has followed is a version of Barcelona that's more explosive and more volatile than the positionally excellent ones before it. A treble quickly came in 2014-15, and then they won a double last term. 

Now, though, it's intriguing to ponder whether such a dynamic is beginning to drift a little too far along the stylistic spectrum.  

Before the current season began, it was argued in these pages that this might be the most challenging of Luis Enrique's years to date. After two campaigns of dominance, there was always going to be a need to continue working on the method, fine-tuning it and introducing new measures as a sort of checks-and-balances exercise. But that's not easy.

"The third season," the great Hungarian manager Bela Guttmann used to say, "is fatal."

Guttmann's line is a famous one and more recently has come to linger around Jose Mourinho. That's not to say it will apply to Luis Enrique as well, but some of the indicators in the early weeks of the season could point to a Barcelona team that's losing a grip on one of the components that has helped make them great. 

Season	Poss. (%)	Tackles	Interceptions
2010-11	67.4	18.5	18.2
2014-15	65.3	21.1	13.1
2016-17	63.5	16.6	12.6

Statistics should never be considered definitive, but those in the above table paint a certain picture nevertheless.

Barcelona this season are having less of the ball than they have at any point this decade. This term, their league average of 63.5 per cent is down two percent on Lucho's treble season and four per cent on their figure from 2010-11—the year many consider to be the peak of Guardiola's team. 

Given the shift in emphasis at the Camp Nou, that's to be expected. The concern, though, is the drop in stats related to winning the ball back. Theoretically, and for a lot of teams in practice, having less of the ball means higher rates of tackling and intercepting. But that's not what Barcelona are getting.

Despite their possession percentage dipping, the Catalans have seen drops in tackles and interceptions, the decrease in the former standing at almost five per game compared with the treble season of 2014-15. Again, numbers shouldn't be looked at as definitive, but here they do suggest that Barcelona are not only controlling the ball to a lesser degree but are also less inclined to apply pressure and win it back. 

In theory, that allows the opposition to play far more than before, and that's what we're seeing. This term, Barcelona have looked more systematically vulnerable than previously. They've conceded four goals to Celta Vigo; two to Valencia, Alaves and Real Betis; and one to Leganes and Atletico. That's 12 conceded in nine games—four times as many than at the same stage in Luis Enrique's first season. 

It's still early, but the defeat to Celta marked the club's worst start in over a decade. The reliance on certain individuals to provide structure (Gerard Pique and Sergio Busquets) rather than the structure always existing sticks out, too. It's as though, perhaps unknowingly, Barcelona have allowed themselves to drift a touch too far stylistically, that the volatile quality has been embraced to too great an extent. 

It was seven years ago when Guardiola said it, but it's still relevant now—"Without the ball we are a disastrous team, a horrible team. So we need the ball."

Follow @TimDCollins

All statistics courtesy of WhoScored.com.